


He remembers

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, this is an aftermath fic of when dick was brainwashed by the court of owls, we headcanoned that he would still be really angry and violent but not know it, yes no dialogue is a conscious addition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-11-13 06:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11178891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: What was it like, to have free will and control stripped from you, by family?That's what the Court of Owls did to Dick, they stripped him of who he is and made him into a monster with a killing streak. When his family freed him from his brainwashing, he thought he was getting better.But he didn't realise, didn't know all the things his family had to do to hide his newfound rage from the public.That they had to protect him and the people he comes in contact with.But he just didn't know





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to fashionablesnider and that-casual-cheesecake for the assistance and helping me edit this xx
> 
> This is for fishfingersandjellybabies, I hope you like it! This was from a short conversation about this and here it is!

Dick didn’t know how he ended up here. 

He remembered being free. Like his head clearing from a fog, eyes opening for the first time. Like he could breathe again, the would going from black and white to colour like water dripping from a tap. Sounds didn’t sound like he was underwater, he could smell things and register what they were. The anger that was constantly in his chest, in his mind and blanketing his thoughts with a thick film of red was just… gone.

He remembered collapsing on the floor, at the feet of his family. Bruce’s arms closing him in, a tin-foil shock jacket in human form. Remembered Tim, checking his wounds and telling him to breathe, slow and steady, in and out. Remembered the sounds of battle waging behind him, bullets and screams and swearing and battle cries. Remembered Jason coming over and the tell-tale _pssh_ of his helmet coming off, jammed onto Dick’s head and a button pushed. Air came rushing in from the sides, but it wasn’t the stale air of the room filled with Owls and blood, but clean air. He could breathe easier. Remembered Cass sliding in on her knees in front of him, pointing at him then putting up a thumb. _You good?_ He nodded and she kissed his hand and ran off. 

He remembered that when all the fighting was over, his family crowded around him, making sure he was ok. They tried to move him at one point, to lift him to the Batmobile so Bruce could take him home, but he just shook his head and told them he could walk. He very well could _not_ walk. Bruce and Jason walked on either side of him, arms behind his back. He leant heavily on Jason, apologising relentlessly, but Jason told him to shut it and let him take care of Dick for once. He was still dizzy, his mind not knowing what it was supposed to do now it was given back the power that it had been stripped of for so long. His feet dragged behind him like a newborn doe, and if he had looked back he would have noticed Tim in his wake, hands out and ready to catch him if he fell backwards 

He remembered the therapy he went through. The nightmares he could never talk about because he could never remember what they were except for the ever-present rage that flooded his veins like liquid death. The training he went through to get up to Bruce’s standards so he could get back on patrol. The limits he pushed himself to, to prove to himself that he would never be taken over that easily again. He still felt the rage, but it was towards what the Court of Owls did to him and how he was powerless to stop it. But the initial constant anger he felt daily was gone. That’s what he thought, after all. 

But if he had paid more attention, he would have noticed the glances his family shared when he talked about the fury he felt in his dreams. How Jason, Damian and Cass often tried to sit him down and give him tips on how to manage the anger he didn’t think he had. People asking him how he was feeling and every time he replied: _“I’m ok.”_ Would have noticed how he never went on patrol by himself anymore, how after a takedown he was surprisingly happy with, whoever was with him would be on their coms, contacting the rest of the family. But he was too distracted, too caught up in his own self-absorbed success of beating the system and being the man he was before his grandfather took him and made him what he was born to be, that he didn’t see his family cover up his mistakes, his punishments too harshly dealt, the blood he didn’t remember spilling. 

He didn’t see it happening, and the others didn’t know whether to be afraid or relieved.

One night, the whole family decided to go on patrol. In different parts of the city, but if they all met up it was just a lucky coincidence, right? Cass volunteered to go with Dick, saying she could probably calm the tempest inside him if things got rough. During their patrol, they came across a well-known thug called Boom. Dick remembers Boom talking to him, but he doesn’t remember what he said. He just remembers the jump, how he whipped his arms and legs around like a hurricane and whacked him straight in the face, landing back on his feet. He felt satisfaction as he looked, expecting to see Boom falling to the floor, but was instead greeted with the sight of him running away, vanishing behind a corner. 

He remembers the confusion because he knew he hit him. 

Then the fear, the horror, the blood-freezing panic at seeing Cass on the floor, holding her face, blood leaking from between her fingers and dripping onto the dirty concrete. Her eye was already starting to bruise and swell. Cass knew body language, knew it better than she knew English, was trained her whole life to being able to recognise body language. She saw what Dick was about to do, and had jumped in front of Boom, taking the beating herself.  Dick remembers calling out to her, bending down to touch her shoulder, to apologise, anything… 

But she flinched away. 

Dick was withdrawing his hand, standing up and stumbling backwards as fast as he could. He remembered looking up and seeing his family's bright colours dotting the darkened rooftops. Stephanie had her hand over her mouth, flinging down from a fire escape to land next to Cass, pulling her hand away with frantic whispering of _“let me see, let me see”._ Bruce standing on a roof nearby, cape blowing in the putrid wind and Dick couldn’t see his face from there, but he could hear Damian’s cries and screams of anguish, “ _Father let me go, let me go to them!”_ as Bruce hung onto his arm. Jason and Tim were running over from a few streets away, screaming at him to “ _stop and wait for us, we can talk this out!”_  

But Dick’s mind was already recoiling, thundering to _run away and never show his face to  these people again_ , so Dick turned around and leaped onto a dumpster, flipping over a fence and grapple hooking onto a building. He saw Harper at one point, calling him back and Kate too, who just let him go. He didn’t want to see any of them ever again. 

He thought he was free. Thought that he had bested the Court of Owls and shouted loud and proud in their face _I am Richard John Grayson-Wayne and you will not control me._ He thought the anger had subsided until it became a dull ache in the pit of his chest, so dull it was hardly there at all. How can he face them, his friends, his family, ever again? He’s the oldest, he was so used to putting on a brave face for them, masking his insecurities with mirth and jokes, so they had someone to look up to when they needed inspiration, and now that he’s done this… 

He could never go back to Gotham again.

* * *

Dick wasn’t seen or heard from for a couple of weeks. 

Unsurprisingly, it was Jason who found him. Jason always knew where everyone was, he just didn’t overly care. But out of all the detectives in his family, Jason was the only one to check his flat in Blüdhaven. And that was where he was. When Jason slipped in through his window under the cover of the night, the last thing he had expected to hear was retching. 

Walking deeper into the house, into Dick’s bathroom with its light on, Jason felt his stomach drop. Dick’s hair was mussed and bed-messy, sticking to the back of his neck as sweat had accumulated. His head was resting on his arms that were around the toilet bowl, gagging and heaving. Splashes could be heard as Dick violently threw up, tears running down his face and he was _sobbing_ , trying to catch a breath but every time he got the chance he was closing his eyes as another wave of up chuck spewed from his mouth. 

Jason walked forward and knelt beside Dick, grabbing his hair in one of his hands and held it back, rubbing his back with the other. The air was thick with the scent of vomit and Jason nearly gagged. He didn’t know how long they sat for, Jason with his hands rubbing his back and holding him as his body convulsed. They sat there until Dick’s wet gagging turned to painful dry-heaving, and Jason got him a glass of water and some painkillers. He came back to Dick sitting on the edge of the tub, reaching over to flush the toilet with his head in a hand, his face red. When he took the glass from Jason, he spat that water back in the sink. 

He apologised when Jason had come in, said he hadn’t wanted anyone to see him like that, but Jason just dismissed him and grumbled at him to stop being stupid. Jason asked what had happened and Dick contemplated lying to him. But he couldn’t, because they were all trained by the bat to spot liars, and he wanted Jason to keep trusting him, although he didn’t know why he was. He described his sweaty nightmare and slow nights of wrath and a red burning that made liquid fury in his veins. The pain he inflicted with hands that were no longer his, words that he didn’t want to say, people he loved, his family, that he didn’t want to kill. But the anger was hurting him and the only way to make it stop was to kill and-   

Dick didn’t remember when he had started crying, but Jason was holding him tight against his chest as he sobbed. 

“I think it’s time we all had a talk.”Jason had murmured into his sweaty neck, and Dick could do nothing but nod.

* * *

Dick remembered feeling scared. Remembered arriving at the manor and looking up towards the roof, his heart beating faster and faster, telling him that he didn’t want to be there.

But then he was walking up the stairs without even meaning to, and he was afraid for a different reason. Forgetting he made his own movements reminded him too much of what the Court did.

When he knocked on the door, Alfred didn’t answer it. Instead Dick had to push it open himself and make his way through the unlit house. 

He knew where they would be. The library was the biggest room in the house, but he didn’t know if he was prepared to face them. He found himself wondering about the house, to his bedroom to the upstairs landing, until there was no other rooms for him to go. He was stalling, he knew and the family knew. They could see him, on the cameras. He went back downstairs and went to the clock in the lounge and took the fire pole down to the cave. 

Once Dick realised that his access to the cave had not been denied or banned, he unknowingly spent half an hour in the cave, wanting to look and feel everything in case Bruce thought it was best to send him out, and when he had seen all there was to see Dick made his way upstairs and walked slowly to the library doors. He held the handle, flipped the latch and after taking a big breath he hoped would calm him, he pushed the doors open. 

The whole family was waiting for him in the library, watching him as he walked through the door. The open fire in the fireplace was illuminating the dark room and casting an eerie glow on the people in the room. Bruce was sitting in his leather chair, legs crossed and arms on the rests. Damian was standing next to the chair, back straight and proper. 

Jason was sitting on the windowsill but when Dick walked in, he stood up and walked closer, hands jammed into his jacket pockets. Kate was in the dark end of the room away from the light, but her red hair was glowing. Tim, Cass and Steph was sitting on the couch and Dick couldn’t look at them. Cass was watching him when he walked in. 

Harper and Cullen were sitting on the floor near Bruce’s feet. Harper still had her work clothes on so she must have come straight here. Cullen had a new bruise on his arm, and Dick made a mental note to ask him about it. Alfred was standing next to Barbara’s wheelchair, which explained why he didn’t answer the door. 

He awkwardly sat down on a chair and wrung his hands. Nobody said anything, but Jason had made it across the room and put his hand on Dicks shoulder. Dick smiled, a wide fake smile plastered on his face like the Joker's grin. Bruce finally leant forward in his chair, hands reaching like he wanted to touch Dick’s, but he held back. 

“Who wants to go first?” He had asked, looking around the room. 

Tim did. He told him how he had to hack into a security system and turn off the cameras when he went too rough, his eyes darting from Dick to Jason as if waiting for a signal to tell him he had to stop.

Steph explained how she had to comfort a mother that Nightwing hadn’t turned bad, drumming her fingers on the edge of the couch and trying to look anywhere but Dick.

Jason whispered into his hair how he had to cover up the concussions and broken bones from one of Dick’s patrols and how some may not ever recover, placing a hand on his arm as he sat on the edge of his chair.   

Cass told him in her broken English that she had to comfort a group of children who he had saved that the bad man who hurt the men that took them would not be coming back for them, and she hid behind Steph like she didn’t want Dick to see her. Maybe she didn’t. 

Walking closer to the light, Kate said she took the blame once when he put a man in hospital, and Harper had to turn off the electricity and took over a heist for him so he didn’t hurt anyone.

Cullen nervously tangled the hem of his shirt in his hands and told Dick how he stood up for him at school when people said he turned into the new Red Hood and would join the Joker soon, and got beat up more because of it. 

Barbara looked at him frankly, back straight and posture relaxed but her eyes hard and explained the steps her and her dad had to take to keep the peace within the GCPD, and how hard they tried to lift suspicion off Nightwing when people started calling him a traitor.

Off to the side, partially hidden behind his father, Damian tried to look him in the eyes when he told Dick that he had consciously attempted to send him away from any crimes while they were on patrol together, but his eyes wandered aimlessly around the library nonetheless. 

Bruce didn’t speak at first, silence fell on the library as everyone drank in the confessions and the overflow of spilled emotions. Dick felt Jason’s head move from his shoulder and look at their adoptive father, and Bruce cleared his throat and monotonically cited several cases he purposely kept away from Dick, and narrated the nights he spent following him on patrol, hidden but waiting. 

Dick remembered Bruce leaning forward more in his chair and putting his hands together. He had looked Dick in the eyes and sadly said “You’re not ok.” 

He remembered that it was like a dam being broken and releasing a torrent, a mirror getting smashed and littering sharp shards all over the floor. His smile faded into nothingness and he fell to his knees on the carpet, bawling into his hands. His family didn’t know how to react, to help him. Their strongest, their oldest, the one they look up, sobbing on his knees. Jason just did for Dick what Dick always did for him and  sunk to his knees beside him to hold him while he cried and when Dick moaned that he was _sorry, so sorry he didn’t know_ , Jason just told him to shut up and stop being stupid, let him take care of Dick for once. 

Dick sobbed and he cried and he broke. Dick Grayson had finally broken. The Talons had won. 

No one moved, not until Dick said in between sobs _I’m just like my grandfather,_ then they were flying on him like a flock, hugging him and telling him he was not like his grandfather, that it was ok, they still loved him, they would get through this together. 

He didn’t believe them. 

He didn’t think he ever will again. 

Dick remembered feeling hopeless. A sharp pain in his chest, where his heart should be. He thinks the Talons removed it, how could he be so heartless otherwise? He remembered numbness when the crying stopped and without a word he standing up and leaving, ignoring their calls to come back.

* * *

 

When the door closed, it was their turn to cry. They had never seen Dick like that, and it shattered them. They hoped he believed them, when they said they loved him. 

Somehow, they didn’t think he did. 

They just hoped they could help him, before this hurt him so much they could never get him back.


	2. Chapter 2

He remembered feeling tired.

A tiredness that ran through his veins and shifted his bones, which carried him by muscle memory to his old room in the Manor.

He remembered that no one followed him as he made his room through the darkened hallways that never seemed to end, warping into a maze of fear and regret and exhaustion. He didn’t remember walking to his bed, discarding his clothes in a mess on the floor, or locking the door behind him, but he remembered falling into bed and feeling liquid, like his body had melted.

He tried to think back to all the things that had gone wrong since leaving the court of Owls and their brainwashing. He thought he was getting better. But after listening to all the things his family had done for him, had sacrificed for him…

He’d been getting worse all along.

He wanted to cry, but he felt that all the crying he did downstairs had made him desert dry and empty. His tongue was dry, his eyes were dry and all he wanted to do was sleep. He wondered if his family and the people of Gotham City would ever forgive him for the wrongs he did to them? He hoped so.

That night, he dreamt of blood. Deep crimson and flaky brown, there was enough blood to fill the River Nile. And he was surrounded by it, the knife in his hand dripping a constant flow of red and filling the river to overflow. He was wearing the mask, that dreaded mask of black layers that flowed around him, the brass covers over the eyes, the metal beak that took on the real form of an owl. The blood felt like it was on his skin, making it slick and dripping down his face to the tip of his nose.

He heard that nursery rhyme, in the sing-song voice of a child.

_“Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time—”_

The river was rising, swirling up to his knees. He couldn’t move.

_“—ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch—”_

Hands started rising up out of the river, grabbing onto his legs, his arms, anything they could reach and tried to pull him down.

_“—behind granite and lime.”_

There was a tree above his head and he leapt up to catch it, arms outspread towards a branch, but every time he got close, the branch pulled away.

_“They watch you at your hearth—”_

Eyes appeared from the darkness, bright yellow and dripping malice.

_“—they watch you at your bed—”_

He was drowning, blood filling his lungs as the hands succeeded in pulling him down.

_“Speak not a whispered word of them—”_

He saw bodies floating when he opened his eyes, he knew those bodies. He remembered plunging his knife into them and the warmth of the blood on his hands. He wanted to gag.

_“—or they’ll send The Talon for your head.”_

There was a body above him and he didn’t know who it was but it was right above him and he was drowning, drowning, drowning…

He woke with a gasp. Well… he thought he did. He must still be dreaming. The mask was still on his face, the knife still in his hand. The body he didn’t recognise was still above him. He felt blood, dripping from above him to soak into the fabric and land on his forehead. He couldn’t move.

He remembered the horror, the petrification he felt as he watched the corpse on his ceiling open its eyes, glowing a stoplight red. It opened its mouth to speak and a dark green mist escaped.  _“You are a Talon,”_  it rasped, voice deep and hoarse. _“And you will never leave the Court of Owls as long as you live, Grey Son!”_

* * *

 Jason heard Dick scream from the front door. He was leaving for the night, giving up his room for Harper and Cullen. The shrill sound stopped him dead, and he was already halfway up the stairs when the rest of the family started rushing out of the library.

The door was locked. He spun on his heel and backed up to the other end of the hallway so he could run and ram his shoulder into the door. It still didn’t budge. He did it again. Nothing.

Dick’s screaming was getting worse, and when Jason finally broke the door open with a thump, he thought he was hallucinating.

Dick was on his bed, Talon suit on like he had slept in it. There was a knife on his hand, the one he used to murder so many people. He wasn’t moving, and Jason couldn’t understand because if there was a body on  _his_ ceiling, he sure as hell would be running away.

There was a steady dripping of blood coming from the body and it looked like it was falling on Dick. Jason rushed forward and grabbed Dick by his shoulders, yanking him off the bed and out of the room. He slammed the door behind him.

Dick fell to his knees in a crumpled heap, reaching up to claw desperately at the mask. It wouldn’t budge.

Dick remembered the fabric of the mask burning his face like acid. He thought he could feel it melting through his skin, burning and bubbling and dissolving his bones to mush. Through his screaming and his fingers working desperately at the edges and folds to find the latches that would unclasp the mask, he was dimly reminded of a man who he had poured acid on to get him to stop screaming.

He screamed harder.

He remembered Bruce rushing up the stairs and blocking the landing so nobody else could see. He remembered the needle in his hand, which he threw to Jason and his brother put in in his neck, pulling the plunger and holding his shoulders. Dick’s sight faded and his hearing fizzled out like a dud bomb. He saw a man on a noose in the corner, arms outstretched towards Dick’s throat. _“Join us._ ” He hissed and Dick’s world went black as he screamed his fears of the dark.

* * *

 He remembered waking up cold, his face no longer burning. His wrists and ankles had been tied to a metal work bench by chains. It felt strangely familiar. Is vision dimmed and green smoke danced around his eyes. Men and women in white masks and black suits, blue dresses and fancy ties were standing around the table. One was holding a needle full of green liquid in one hand and a knife in the other. Both the needle and the knife came down upon his chest and he drew in a gasp to lose his last ever scream as a free man-

A blink and the image was gone.

He was in the cave, the Batcave, and he was on the medical bed. Not a sacrificial stone. Not a dank cave in a mountain where nobody would hear his cries. He was chained to a med-bay bed.

He looked around, straining his ears to hear any movement in the cave. He could hear the pitter-patter of fast typing from the space to his right- Tim. He swallowed and started testing his chains quietly.

They were metal, not the soft padded ones they usually used in the med-bay, more like the ones in the containment chamber. He let out a soft curse as he relived images of Bruce, high off his head on Ivy’s cocktails, thrashing in those cuffs. Dick would never break out of them. He needed help. He needed to get out of the cave. He can’t...Jesus, he can’t hurt his family anymore.

“Tim.” he called hoarsely, his voice was scratched and small, so he tried again, “Timmy.”

The fingers stopped on the keyboard, his brother hesitating for several minutes, then Dick heard the sound of the chair across the stone floor, and Tim was at Dick’s side, still in his Red Robin suit, sans mask, his hand gravitating to Dick’s forehead to check his temperature, Dick felt a hysterical laugh brew in his chest, as if only he could take a few antibiotics and wake up better; he leaned into the touch anyway.

He let Tim see him struggle to turn on his side, and rattled the chain harder than it needs to, Tim flinched.

“Tim what happened?” he asked, willing his voice to be scared and low, he noticed the slight shift behind Tim’s eyes when he decided to lie.

“You were screaming, nightmares, I think. We were scared you would hurt yourself.”

Dick hummed and rubbed his hair further into Tim’s fingers. He shifted again and let out a deliberate small moan of pain. Tim frowned, then checked his cuffs. Dick repressed his grin and manoeuvred his fingers into Tim’s glove as he leaned to check across the bed.

“It’s fine Timmy. Where’s Jason?” he asked, letting his eyes well up in tears, and looking around the room. Tim hugged himself and took a step back.

“I’ll go find him for you, he’s still here.”

Dick nodded several more times than he needed to and Tim was gone in a second, feet running across to the entrance of the Cave.

It took Dick four minutes to get rid of the lock picks around his hands and feet, and he quickly got dressed, forcing himself to stop imagining how betrayed Tim would be when he got back.

He slipped into his boots, put on his mask and grabbed his spare escrima sticks, then walked to his bike. He slowly walked it through the tunnels and out through the mouth of the cave, into the dirty Gotham air. When he was far enough out, he jumped on his bike and rode off, away from the house with concerned glances and worried eyes.

* * *

Tim froze, the breath knocking out of him when he heard the roar of a bike echoing across the cave walls. He started running, and he could hear Jason’s heavy footsteps behind him. Jason, who was about to see the empty bed and kill Tim where he stands. How could he be so stupid? He could feel his teeth clenching painfully, and he didn’t even glance at the med-bay before he sounded the alarm through the manor.

Jason’s muttered curses hit him like wounds, and he didn’t look up from the computer as he ran his search algorithm for Nightwing’s uniform around the manor and the surrounding areas.

Bruce’s sharp breath hit him even worse, as the man himself reviewed the security footage of Dick’s escape.

“I’m so sorry.” Tim forced himself to look up at the two men. He wished fiercely for his mask to be covering his face. Nobody should have to withstand Bruce’s disappointed glare this exposed, he thought.

Jason sighed, and Tim turned to look at him, “It’s fine replacement, it’s the puppy dog eyes, anyone could fall for those stupid baby-blues.” and it sounded sincere, if a little reluctant, and Tim felt his limbs moving before he realized he was barreling into Jason for a hug. He felt the gloved fingers in his hair and let out a little sob into the older man’s chest. This night has been way longer than it had any right to be.

The alert broke the moment, and they all turned to the computer where Dick, in his Nightwing uniform, stood in an ally ten minutes away from the Manor in front of a cluster of children with torn clothes and blood stained skin, huddled together as he shielded them from the men in front of them. His face was a mask of fury, his hands and escrima sticks covered in dark splashes.

The men approached and the children shrieked.

Dick lunged.

Lightning flashed from his escrima sticks, exploding on each impact. Thuds, cracks, thumps, whacks, men went down in a flurry of electricity and pain. Blood welled up and bruises boiled to the surface of their skin. Men went down, red soared, blue and black lashed out to collide with dark green and brown. Gun shots and the littering of bullet casings hitting the floor. A bullet flew straight at the surveillance camera, smashing the screen and turning the picture dark.

Jason was out of the cave before the bullet hit.

* * *

Dick’s vision was shrouded in a wave of anger, deep red covering the world in a fury burning hot as fire. His hands, tingling, shaking, waiting to be used at his sides. He thought he could hear himself growling, snarling as he stood in front of the children. Felt the screaming in his head of enough is enough.

He remembered the satisfaction he felt when his sticks make contact with a man’s face and he crumpled to the floor like a tonne of bricks. Out cold and bleeding.

He couldn’t remember what happened next, except for the slick feeling of warm blood turning his skin slippery and the sounds he made when he buried his foot into a man’s ribcage and felt a sickly crunch. The pressure when he lashed out and connected somebodies face with his stick and the electricity that bounced around the alley lighting the darkness in deathly white and illuminating the bloodbath that Dick was creating.

The last man fell to the floor as the children from behind him whimpered out of fear. He stayed out of the light so they couldn’t see the blood caking his uniform and told them that they were safe. They stopped shaking and they fearfully thanked him, almost as though they thought he would hurt them too if they didn’t. He would never hurt them, he was Nightwing, the uniform meant hope, didn’t it? Something deep in the pit of his stomach stirred and he steadied himself with a shaking hand on the brick wall. His hand was so bloody. When had that happened? He felt sick, and when he looked to his side again, the children were already at the end of the alley, sprinting on trembling legs into the cold Gotham night, not even looking behind.

He remembered hearing a rumble from behind him and he spun around, escrima at the ready. Dick remembered that he saw the blazing red of Jason’s bike and saw the headlights glisten as they came up to the ally.

He started running towards the dead end at the other side of the alleyway, ignoring Jason’s desperate pleas of  _“Come back please we can get through this together, you don’t need to do this!”_

Dick leapt off of the wall and connected with the next one, using the momentum to carry him up, up, up until he could catch hold of a fire escape and swing off of a clothes line and barrel roll onto a roof. He didn’t look back as he sprinted away from his brother, didn’t look back as he dived off of the edge of the building and out of sight of Jason’s desperate eyes.

Jason made it to the opening and got off his bike just as the last flecks of blue disappeared over the edge of a far away roof.


End file.
